Brad Olson: Remember the roots of American culture

In the Jan. 28 issue of the National Review, next to an article entitled "Where's Waleed? The Case For Profiling," there is an advertisement for Pat Buchanan's latest book, The Death of the West.

On the left half of the ad, there is a picture of the one-time serious presidential candidate, now an oft-ridiculed commentator, looking somewhat resigned. On the right, publicists described the book with six phrases: "Our borders opened. Our country invaded. Our culture destroyed. Our heroes defiled. Our values assaulted. Our God dethroned."

It doesn't stop there. After the question, "Can our America survive?," there are a few bullet points to elaborate, each a little more absurd, and a little scarier, than the one before it.

"There are 30 million foreign-born in the US today and more than nine million illegal aliens."

"Islam has already surpassed Catholicism as the world's largest religion."

But the most telling are the last two, which read, "European-Americans are a minority in America's most populous state, California," and, "By 2050, only 10 percent of the world's people will be of European descent."

The only answer to any of these statements, if it happens that they are true, is a resounding "so what?"

Of course, not too many people take Buchanan seriously, especially when he makes such horrible and dangerously misguided statements as these. Now, though, Buchanan is not the lone voice of opposition in the battle over immigration. A number of politicians and idealogues have followed the normal historical path of war to impose heavier strictures on would-be migrants to our country. It is one of the more woeful results of Sept. 11.

But in or out of war, xenophobia is nothing new to our land of freedom. Yes, we've all quoted the famous sonnet at the base of the Statue of Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Yet even before the American Revolution, some of our most prominent and famous leaders wanted the newcomers out, with special emphasis on those who were different.

In 1753, our own beloved Benjamin Franklin said the following of the German immigrants who then constituted one-third of the population of Pennsylvania: "Why should the Palatine Boors [Germans] be suffered to swarm into our settlements, and by herding together, establish their language and manners to the exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanicize us instead of our Anglifying them?"

No one would put Ben Franklin alongside Pat Buchanan. But side by side, these quotes are decidedly similar. They are warnings against a change that was and is inevitable. They are fears that our culture will be disrupted when some other culture subsumes it or displaces it.

Their obvious mistake, though, is in assuming that their culture is American culture. Therein lies the great irony of America. It is an immigrant culture.

American values are values that immigrants bring in every year anew to create a beautiful and powerful cultural continuity. First, immigrants are hard workers; lazy people do not, nor did not, leave the country of their birth for a new life elsewhere.

Once in the New World, immigrant survival required backbreaking work on farms or in factories, and more often, when immigrants spoke no English, they found themselves underemployed, working long hours to survive. But work is what brings many of them here.

They are also risk-takers. Conservative, cautious people are too scared to leave a world they understand. When my great, great, great grandfather, Lars Asbjornsen, told his father in 1888 of his decision to "go to Wisconsin, North America," his father said, "My God, boy, you're crazy. It's a land of savages. They'll kill you and drink your blood." Confidence is and always has been pandemic among immigrants, who are convinced that chances are worth taking and risks worth enduring.

Immigration explains much about the legendary American faith in the future, the belief that progress is inevitable and failure impossible.

Another quality immigrants bring to America is a streak of rebellion in their personalities, an unwillingness to always do what they're told. They have been willing to stretch or break the rules in order to get here and stay here. Over the centuries, they have often exercised creative manipulation of the law, whether getting by on forged documents, staging sham marriages or keeping one step ahead of Immigration and Naturalization Service agents.

Now, in insecure times, coming to America will not be so easy as it was, and neither will staying here. But the dream of America will never keep them out. It never has. In many of the most important ways, before they ever leave home, immigrants have already become Americans.

Brad Olson is a senior History major from Huntsville, Texas.

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